The April Fool

I was thinking about a guy whom Bisq and I refer to as Magu on his birthday which is April Fools Day. We lost touch with Magu back in 2003, just before my brother's wedding. Okay, losing touch is a nice way to put it...Zulie(my mom) kicked him out of the house.
His real name is Marty, and he was Zulie's boyfriend from 1996-2003. We called him Magu because he was a lot like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo: kinda blind, kinda deaf, kinda oblivious. But, in our Magu's case, also kinda stoned....all of the time.
This is one of those stories where you can throw your hands up and say, "Well, they really created a monster!" Perhaps you're right.
Zulie brought Magu home from a date in the summer of 1996. I was living at home for a brief spell and Biscuit was always there, too. I remember meeting Magu and thinking that he could be a cool boyfriend for Zulie. You should've met the one before him. Zulie and Magu both worked on Royal Street in the French Quarter. They both sold antiques. They claimed to have known each other back in the 1960s. The story goes: Magu was in ZBT (a fraternity at Tulane) and Zulie was often at the ZBT house as the little sister...hmmm. Anywhoo, both of them are so loopy and forgetful that they unintentionally fabricate their histories. I'm too lazy to fact-check on that one. Anyway, it wasn't long after that day that Magu moved in. As with most of Zulie's relationships with men, it moved at a cheetah's pace. It started off with him coming over after work each day with his little red cloth overnight bag. Before he was living at our comfortable sprawl, complete with maid service and a stocked kitchen and bar, he resided at a place we referred to as Fort Appache with his 2 cats, Bushki and Dee. His place was basically disgusting, in spite of his decent salary. Turns out, just before he and Zulie hooked up, Magu and his ex, Donna, had been arrested while moving Donna's stuff cross-country in a U-Haul. They got searched when pulling out of a rest-stop in Texas and the cops found Donna's stash...or so the story goes. Again, no way to fact check, but suffice it to say, Magu was in financial dire straits. Definitely the poorest Jew we'd ever run across.
He brought his poor man ways into our home, and we adapted to some of them. He knew how to survive off of Total (the cereal), yogurt and sweet potatoes. We found ourselves eating this trio, especially when we were high. We also admired the way he mastered the art of dressing to chill in the house. When he had his days off, he rarely left the house. He smoked weed in bed and smoked cigarettes in the patio. He introduced us to Dearfoam slippers which we all still swear by. It's the only reason I'll get anywhere near a mall at Christmas time. He lounged around in an old pair of designer sweatpants that had belonged to Zulie before they had lost their elasticity. I don't know how they stayed up.
He had a bad-ass record collection, stacks of vintage playboys and all of the issues of High Times from the 70s and 80s. It seemed that his records all had been handled by his cats, so they were mostly unlistenable. However, Magu hipped us to the genius of Gary Wright, Poco, Al Stewart and Firefall. Bisq and I really enjoyed hanging out with Magu. How many of our friends were cool enough to have a mustache and a stutter?
His ancient blue truck parked alongside our house drew the attention of the neighbors and the neighborhood security guard. It took a while for the guard to realize that this truck actually belonged to an invited guest. Magu also had a really old red Dodge Colt that we called the Lil' Red Tomato that he kept on his property in Waveland, Mississippi. I know what you're thinking, "Magu had oceanfront property?" We checked out his property for July 4th one year and began calling it Spawn Ranch. It was a graveyard for old cars, broken lawnmowers, and boats up on blocks. The obvious thing to do once you've made the journey out there is to have a bonfire. And that's what we did. It was marsh land, which could certainly be mistaken for oceanfront property when it rained a few inches. I imagine Magu was able to fish through the window of the trailer without even having to go outside.
In our minds, life was good for Magu. For the first 3 years, it was really fun. All of us partied, laughed, and enjoyed this twasted dude from Memphis. Zulie gave him her old Mazda, so he wouldn't be stranded in one of his lemons. Okay, she gave him the Mazda so he would remove his embarrassing truck from our property. She made him part of her family, since he didn't have much contact with his own. But, over time he became unappreciative of living off of the fat of the land. In fact, he got a little fat off of the expensive protein that we had introduced into his diet. He stopped talking to me first. When I'd visit while living in New Mexico, he'd enter the house without as much as a hello. Instead, he speed past me and say, "W-W-W-Where's yer mother?" He'd lock himself in the bedroom and turn the TV's volume up to a deafening level. It seemed his deafness increased in direct proportion to his obstinance. Eventually, he began to ignore Zulie. You can get away with a lot with her, but DON'T walk away when she's serenading you on her ukulele and DON'T forget to say thank you. Live by these rules, and she's putty in your hands. He had much to be thankful for. She took him out of poverty and had him living like a fat cat. She fetched him weed when he ran out and kept the pantries stocked with Total. He acted up pretty bad when we all went to China in 1999. When Zulie treated us all to a family vacation in Italy in 2000, Magu was slightly better, but was basically antisocial. After a few more lousy years of him occupying the house, Zulie decided to kick him out.
She executed the plan over Memorial Day weekend in 2003, just in time to not buy him a plane ticket to Augie's wedding in Cape Cod. She told him to leave, and he walked out the door with his little red cloth overnight bag. No big deal. He moved onto some friend's couch in some shanty.
Months later, Zulie spotted him at a nightclub and saw that he had dropped all of the weight he had gained while living with her. And, he was talking up a blue streak with a big crowd. The belle of the ball. She was pissed...mostly about the weight-loss.
So, the moral of the story is this: don't think that you can civilize somebody just because they were living without the things that you would miss. Some guys want to wallow in their mess. Some guys really don't care that they can't hear. Some guys choose not to have health insurance. Some guys choose not to appear in court. Poor Zulie...she's made the same mistake since Magu, but never to such an extent. Regardless, I still think he was the April Fool.